


between heaven and hell

by enoon



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009!Dan, 2019!Phil, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, Time Travel, a glimpse of the future, i'm shitty at tags, there's too many mentions of death and such
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-01 17:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enoon/pseuds/enoon
Summary: "For the people in my life, for the future I would've waisted." (c) BIGTime travel of sorts. What if Dan had a glimpse into his future at the right moment?2009 Dan and 2019 Phil.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, first of all, TW: mentioning of suicide attempt and suicidal thoughts, but I've tried my best not to focus on them that much (upd: I think I'm failing).
> 
> Second, this fic was born as a result of me thinking about that part in BIG where Dan says "because just before it was too late, I thought..." and there is just a mess of thoughts.
> 
> And, of course, it's just a work of fiction. 
> 
> Tell me what you think.

I'm so glad I failed. For so many reasons.

For the people in my life, for the future I would've waisted.

_*_

_It’s late, and he is looking at the town below, at all the lights and mundane life, at careless people, people who don’t care. Is he going to jump? No, the building is not that tall, it won’t do. He has the pills though. And some whisky._

_Fuck it, to hell with this life. _

_He reaches into his pocket, hands trembling a little. He doesn’t remember how the pills end up in his open palm. Will they be enough? He hopes so. He doesn’t want to end up in yet another awkward situation. His palms are sweaty, his heart is going crazy. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes._

*

Dan opened his eyes only to find himself drowning in the ocean of sunlight. Everything was so bright, the light going in through the huge window and being trapped in the room with white walls and white furniture. So fucking bright. Was it _Hell_?

The pillows were greyish though. Dan looked around, confused. The room wasn’t really all white, the light was blinding him. There were colorful things all around. Stupid things, unnecessary things. And there were clothes on the floor, and clothes in the armchair, and plants on the windowsill, and books with the bookmarks laying on the bedside table.

If it really was hell or heaven, that’d be so messed up. Who reads Stephen King’s books out there in the afterlife? _Jesus_!

And then there was a voice, strangely familiar voice that announced, “Coffee for the sleepy head!”

Dan hid himself under the blanket. He wasn’t sure why would he do that. He tried not to breath.

“I know I’ve promised you a quiet day at home, but do you reckon we can go out and, I dunno, just walk around the city? After the desert it’s just… Dan, why are you hiding? I’ve brought you _coffee_!”

Dan knew this voice, he definitely did. This manner of speech was somehow very familiar to him, but something else was there, something new. As if a voice of a friend who he hadn’t seen in years – oh well, it wasn’t something he’d know about, but – yes, that’s what it _felt_ like.

Okay, that afterlife thing was weird as fuck, he might as well go on and look at the owner of the familiar-yet-unfamiliar voice. And he did, and his heart skipped a beat.

“Wow, _Amazing Phil_?” was all he could say.

And then coffee mugs slipped through Phil’s fingers, and there was a loud _bang_, and a millisecond later another _bang_, and then Phil yelled as if someone was trying to kill him and started to dance. It took few moments for Dan to realize that the mugs were broken into pieces, and that coffee was hot, and that Phil was probably not dancing but trying to jump out of a puddle of coffee.

“The flipping duck!” Phil screamed, and then, pointing at Dan, “the _fuck_?”

Dan wasn’t sure what to say to his favorite youtuber standing – well, not really _standing_, more like swinging – in front of him, so he said, “Hi?”

After focusing his eyes on Phil’s face, Dan immediately noticed that the person he was looking at wasn’t really the Amazing Phil he knew. This man was much older and had shorter hair, and everything about him was wrong. Not in a bad way, no. This was a real person, and all Dan saw before was a two-dimensional version of him on a rather small screen.

That real-life older version of Phil scared Dan just enough to make him speechless for a moment. He was still intrigued though. He asked, “Is it heaven or hell? Not that I believe in those, I don’t, but this shit kinda leaves me no choice, ‘m I right?”

“What?” Phil was looking around the room. Terrified, eyes popping out, hands trembling. He went from funny dances around the puddle into a complete shock in a matter of seconds. Dan didn’t really know the guy, but it sure as hell looked like Phil was losing his mind. “Where?” Phil asked, and his hand made a movement as to point at something but couldn’t find the thing to point at. “How?” Phil asked yet another rhetorical question.

Dan had no answers for him, he needed some of those himself.

He started to get nervous about this whole thing. Which was dumb for obvious reasons, but still – still, that situation was plain ridiculous. Suddenly, as if for the first time ever, he became aware of his own breathing. Even worse, his heart was beating. Shouldn’t it have stopped doing this?

Was it a dream, the last product of his imagination? Was it his subconsciousness giving him what he so desperately wanted, namely, meeting that weirdo from the North whose videos he grew to like so much? That’d explain it. That’d explain Phil knowing his name. But not the bright colors, not them.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, honestly.

Dan put the blanket away and crawled out of bed. He was still wearing the same outfit, skinny black jeans and a hoody. It was supposed to be his last evening, he wanted to feel comfortable. Just a bit of comfort, was it that much to ask for? He didn’t plan to wake up in any dream or a mess of an afterlife, he didn’t know it’s going to be that hot in here. Maybe it _was_ hell, after all.

He threw the hoodie on the armchair and picked up a black t-shirt. It turned out to have red and white letters printed on it. Interactive introverts, whatever _that_ meant. The shirt was too big for him and felt strange, but Dan didn’t mind.

“So,” he said, turning to look at the amazing-but-old Phil, “what’s up?”

“What happened?” Phil whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, t-b-h”, Dan shrugged. He wanted to say that it’s probably just a dream, and _let’s go grab some dream coffee and talk, wouldn’t it be nice to finally meet each other, oh well, at least for one of us_,_ at least in a dream_, but Phil just turned around and stormed out of the room. Dan didn’t know what else to do, so he followed.

It was a place he never previously saw in his life. There were posters on the walls, and weird art – he was pretty sure it was _fan_ art, – and all sorts of things that made no sense to him whatsoever. He’s never seen those movies. There were a lot of things that he’d call _comic book stuff_, but they didn’t look right. Dan couldn’t say what exactly was wrong with those.

He went by a couple of closed doors and into the biggest lounge room he had ever been in in his entire life. There was a dozen of boxes in the center of the room, and a pile of boardgames on the table, and a large suitcase right in front of a tv set. He spotted a bunch of IKEA boxes in the corner, and near them there were so many wires, so many electronic devices just stacked one on top of the other. The room was a mess, but it looked nice.

“Is it you or–” Phil’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

It was as if Amazing Phil just materialized in front of Dan. The laws of physics and common sense didn’t apply here, it was a dream territory. Phil was standing too close to him – _Jesus, man, personal space! –_ and touching his shoulder. He was frightened and looked lost. What was this dream anyway?

“Dan?” Phil asked.

Dan didn’t like standing that close to another human being. Yeah, sure, it was his favorite youtuber. Dan spammed him with hundreds of comments desperate for his attention, but Amazing Phil had never ever actually talked to him. And this dream didn’t seem to be a nice dream or a sexy one. It wasn’t even a oh-my-god-I’m-meeting-the-best-person-in-the-world kind of dream. It was just plain stupid, really, and inconsistent, and made no sense, and this Phil wasn’t _his_ Phil, so maybe that’s why Dan stepped back from him.

He regretted it right away, because Phil now looked even more lost than before.

“You are real, at least,” said Phil more to himself than to Dan. “Okay, we just need to understand what’s going on,” he looked at Dan briefly and went to sit on the sofa, still mumbling. “That’s crazy, but crazy is what happens to me, right? I’m used to that. That’s another level of crazy, of course, but–”

“Look,” Dan said, “it’s just a dream, relax.”

“It’s definitely not,” was the answer.

“How do you know?”

“I just _know_,” Phil looked at him. “I’ve pinched myself like a thousand times already, and I’m not waking up. And I remember waking up like an hour ago, everything was _fine_. It can be that there are two layers of dreams, sure, _inception_-style, but that’s – no, it’s not a dream, I can _feel_ it’s real. Can’t you?”

“Well, it _can’t _be real,” Dan said, but he suddenly wasn’t that sure. “I mean, it _shouldn’t_ be.”

“Why?”

“I’ve–” he never thought he’d be in a situation where he had to explain to someone that he was dead. “Well, it doesn’t matter, it’s not real. It’s just weird and all.”

“Weird, yes,” Phil agreed. “And terrifying.”

“Why ‘s that?”

“Because you’re – well, _he_’s not here.”

“Who is he?”

“You.”

Dan wasn’t sure he understood it right. “What do you mean, me?”

“You, as in my – I dunno, version of you? You that was here less than an hour ago.”

Dan was puzzled. “Can you, um, show me? Your, um, _version_ of me, do you have a photo or something?”

Phil unlocked his phone and opened a gallery. The man Dan saw on the photos, it wasn’t him, and yet it was. Sometimes when he was looking at the photos of his parents or grandparents from when they were younger, he had the same thought. He experienced it with his childhood pictures. But this was different. Dan wasn’t looking at himself from before, it was him from the fucking future.

He took the phone from Phil’s hands and started scrolling through the photos. There was a ton of selfies from last night. Apparently, they went to some concert together. Before that, there was a couple of indoors and outdoors photos – a tree, a book, a blurry selfie with a funny looking house, them in bed – and then a bunch of photos from what looked like a plane.

“We just came back from Vegas,” Phil said, and there was uncertainty in his voice as if he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to share this with Dan.

He wanted to ask what they were doing there, but then he saw them in the hotel room, them playing golf, them singing at a karaoke bar, them gambling, them crashing things, them in a desert, them on a mountain, them in the car. Them, them, them. Dan liked the idea, oh no, he absolutely _loved_ it. It was an impossibility, it was all in a dream.

He stopped scrolling, because there were too many pictures of other people. It looked like a convention of some sorts, he didn’t care about that.

“And where are we?” Phil asked, and then clarified: “You and me – in your _time_, I guess, – where are we now?”

“We?” Dan asked. He knew all of it wasn’t real, it was all in his head, and still it felt bitter to say: “There are no _we_.”

And now, he thought, there never will be.


	2. Chapter 2

Phil looked like someone who completely blacked out of reality. He was looking at Dan, but it felt as if he was looking through him. For the tenth time in a row Phil unlocked his phone and tried to make a call. He hadn’t said a word, but Dan somehow understood that it wasn’t simply the other person not picking up. And not any other person. The other Dan.

Before Phil could dial that other Dan again, Dan took the phone out of Phil’s hands. “Stop it already, it’s pointless.”

Dan had no idea what to do or what to say. It was supposed to be his dream. He had to be in control, but he wasn’t. It was exactly the type of an awkward situation he was trying to avoid. Being stuck somewhere between life and death, sitting on the same couch as his favorite youtuber – the person he was eager to meet and talk to, the person he had a crash on for who knows how long, the person who was undoubtedly _crashed_ by the sudden disappearance of the older Dan.

Phil wasn’t even trying to hold the tears. Dan didn’t know if it was okay for him to try and comfort him, but he awkwardly patted Phil’s shoulder anyway.

“How old are you?” Phil asked, finally noticing Dan-who-was-there.

“Why’d you ask?” Dan shrugged. He didn’t like all the talk around age, and it was even more pointless now that he wasn’t really alive. He looked at Phil for a second and decided to answer anyway. “Seventeen. Almost eighteen.”

“You were eighteen when we met.”

“Really?” he felt a sudden phantom pain in his chest. “Tell me more.”

Phil closed his eyes, but the tears were still running down his cheeks. “I don’t understand,” Phil said. “Haven’t we talked already? In your time, I mean.”

“Not really. You answered few of my comments on your videos, but that hardly counts.” If Dan was being honest, he treasured those short answers, and in his mind, it did count. In the absence of anything else, it did feel as a real conversation.

“And what about twitter?”

“I don’t have a twitter.”

Phil took his phone back from Dan – Dan didn’t even realize he was holding it the whole time – and opened a twitter app. “You created your account in May. So, you are from before May of 2009, right?”

Instead of answering him, Dan asked to take a look at his twitter. Phil frowned: “We’re messing with the timeline here, I don’t think you should.”

“It won’t hurt,” Dan said.

“It might.”

“Come on, it’s just twitter.”

But Phil shook his head and locked his phone. A smile appeared on his face, but it was a sad one. “No,” he said. “We have a mystery to solve. We are like in an episode of Doctor Who. It’d be amazing if it wasn’t that scary. Dan’s adventures in time and space, huh? Okay, we need a plan.” He used his t-shirt to wipe his tears away. “So, we have to figure out what happened to my Dan and where is he now. And we have to understand what exactly happened to you and why’d you travel that far into the future.”

“How far, exactly?” Dan asked. He was sure it wasn’t the future, more like a dream of something he will never have, but learning the details was probably the only thing that was stopping him from going completely insane.

“Well, it’s July, 2019, so, you know, more than ten years.”

“If you had to guess,” Dan asked, going along with Phil’s mystery-solving adventures and imagining himself a Doctor, “why it’d be this particular moment in time that I came to?”

“I’m more interested in _how_, to be honest. Have you, I dunno, encountered any weeping angels?”

“They send you into the past, not the future.”

“Right, well, what else? What’s the last thing you remember doing?”

There was no way he was going to talk about _that_. His heart was beating louder and faster than it was acceptable. How embarrassing, really. He was supposed to be dead, and yet there he was, avoiding uncomfortable conversation with the most amazing person in the universe, stuck on his way to the afterlife that he didn’t believe existed. Why the heartbeat, though? It should’ve slowed and then stopped.

But it didn’t. Dan was questioning the dreamlike reality he found himself in. It felt awfully real sometimes, and even the presence of a grown-up Amazing Phil didn’t make it any less real. If Dan was dreaming this one, Phil and his behavior would be _so_ different.

Dan knew there was no way this could be real. Time travel wasn’t an option in the everyday life. But if he had to choose between being stuck in the afterlife and travelling ten years into the future, Dan would choose the future. He didn’t have one, not anymore, but he was willing to pretend that he had. He tried to stop questioning the reality he found himself in. He was going to assume it was real, and he was going to find out everything he can about it. The idea of him and Amazing Phil being friends fascinated Dan. And not just friends apparently, something more than that. Even if it was only in his mind, he was willing to explore it, to entertain the idea.

“Look, _Phil_,” he said, and calling Amazing Phil by his name in person felt _amazing_, “I was just out, doing nothing. And nothing happened, really. I was there, and then I was here, and that’s it.”

“That’s not how time travel works,” Phil protested.

“And how do we know how it does or doesn’t work? Or do you mean to tell me that in ten years humanity will learn how to travel in time?”

“No, of course not-” Phil frowned a bit. “Well, you are here, I don’t know-” he tilted his had a little. “I meant it’s not how it works in Doctor Who. Or in any other movies or books for that matter.”

“Then tell me what might be so important about this time in, um, my life? I’m sure this is like a thing with time travel.”

Phil smiled, and his smile was genuine. Dan would even go as far as to say it was _happy_. “Everything about this time is, well, I guess, _perfect_.”

“Perfect _how_?” Dan knew himself and his ability to fuck everything up, and “perfect” couldn’t be used to describe his life. Shit, he already didn’t have a life, but he was ignoring that bit and learning a thing or two about this possible future of his. “Can you show me?” he asked.

It seemed as if Phil was going to unlock his phone again, but then he stopped himself from doing it. “Learning your future isn’t a good thing. You have to live it.”

“I just don’t believe in perfect, and so all this-” Dan looked around the lounge room they were sitting in, “well, it doesn’t feel real.”

“I know, right? We just bought this house. Still in the unpacking stage as you can see.”

“_We_? _Bought_? A _house_? Where?”

“Um, London?” Phil sounded as if he wasn’t sure himself.

“You are kidding me, aren’t you?”

“Nope. That’s totally a thing.”

Dan wanted to ask what kind of jobs afford them to buy a fucking house in fucking London, but he asked another thing, something that he thought he already knew the answer for from all the pictures Phil showed him, but he needed it to be said out loud. “Are we friends?”

“Yes, of course we are,” Phil shrugged, but then looked at Dan and added: “Oh. Oh! You’ve meant it like, yeah, no, we are more, obviously.”

Dan liked the sound of _obviously_, and he liked how Phil blushed a little. “How long we’ve been, um, a thing?”

“Ten years.”

“What?!” Dan felt the goose bumps all over his body.

“Should we even talk about this? What if it messes up the future?” Phil looked nervous. “As much as I want to tell you everything, I am afraid it might not be the best idea. Look, _Dan_, the Dan I know is missing, and I might seem calm about it, but I’m freaking the fuck out.”

“You are anything but calm,” Dan chuckled, but there was nothing funny about the situation. Phil’s Dan was missing, and it was Dan’s fault. He now thought it was obvious. He fucked everything up. Again. “Can I use the bathroom?” he asked quietly.

“Sure, it’s there, down the hall, next to the bedroom. You’ll see.”

Dan left the lounge. He knew his phone was in his jeans, he could feel it there. He checked the internet connection, but it wasn’t working. He had no idea what the wi-fi password was, and Dan knew that if he asked Phil about it, Phil wouldn’t share it with him. He’d probably say that the internet was a place no time traveler should go to. Too many information up there just waiting to be found. Dan didn’t really care that much about the world in general, he wanted to look at his twitter and maybe find out a thing or two about himself and his relationship with Phil.

All he needed was a wi-fi connection.

He thought about sneaking out of the house to look for the nearest Starbucks in the area, but it seemed as a desperate move. With no idea which part of the city he is in, with no knowledge of the area or London in general, with almost no money in his wallet – no, sneaking out wasn’t a great idea. Not to mention that leaving Phil alone was probably a dick move. Still, he glanced outside the bathroom window thinking that maybe there was a Starbucks right around the corner that he could go to. Nothing. He abandoned his crazy exploration plans and returned to the lounge.

“You’ve said you wanted to walk around the city, haven’t you?” Dan asked. “Can we do that? I’d like some Starbucks coffee.”

Phil took his time to answer. “What if someone sees you?”

“What’s the big deal? I’m nobody.”

“Don’t say that,” Phil frowned. “You are not.”

“And who’d recognize me like this anyway? You are saying it’s been ten years. I’ve seen the photos. I don’t look anything like your Dan. So, what’s the problem?”

“Well,” Dan could see that Phil was still trying to avoid telling him some things. “Let’s say that people recognize _me_ on the streets, and if they see us together, they’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“This, this thing, that something is wrong, that you are here, and Dan is not.”

“I’m Dan.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Dan didn’t know what to do. He _needed_ to go online. That was probably the only thing that made sense to do if Phil wasn't going to share anything. “No Starbucks then? Are you going to hide me here forever?”

“Forever? No, we’re gonna find a way to fix it. Soon.”

“Sure. Sure.” Dan nodded wat too many times trying to convince himself that this thing will be over soon. “Do you feel like telling me some more about my future? About us?”

“You won’t stop asking?” Dan saw Phil’s smile for a second. “I need time to think. What about coffee? Not Starbucks, just Lavazza.” Dan nodded once again. “Be right back.” Phil stood up and left the lounge.

It didn’t feel like a dream anymore. It was too real. Dan threw himself on the sofa and hid his face in one of the pillows. His hand felt the cold surface of a phone laying forgotten amongst the sofa pillows. Phil’s phone, locked. Dan grabbed it anyway. His finger lightly pressed the button, and, to Dan’s surprise, lock screen disappeared.

Twitter app was open on Daniel Howell’s twitter. His twitter. He didn’t really see the capital “M” right beside the number of followers. He thought how weird it was that 8.1 people were following him. Who was this tenth of a person? His mind was still processing that when his eyes registered the pinned tweet. _Basically I’m Gay_, and a youtube link.

He clicked it. Of course he bloody did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow it got darker than I expected it to be (sorry? idk)  
TW: suicide discussed

Phil walked in at the exact same moment Dan in the video said: “Emo had arrived.” Dan clicked pause and was ready to fight Amazing Phil, to run away from the lounge and lock himself in the bathroom if he had to. There was no chance Phil was getting his phone back. Not now, not before Dan finished the video.

All those ten long minutes that Phil was making coffee, Dan was fidgeting. He felt as if he was doing something illegal, and Phil could return at any moment and catch him doing this. He finally saw the number of views his video had, he noticed the number of subscribers to the channel that had his name. Dan in the future was a youtuber then, just like Phil.

The idea of making a public video about his sexuality terrified him, but it was also oddly exciting and even inspiring. The Dan from this possible future of his was confident enough to make such a statement for the millions of people, and it made Dan’s heart ache and his stomach flip. The man in the video was a completely different person. Photos only reflected the changes in the way Dan looked, but here he could see so much more than that.

Phil put a cup of coffee on the table near the sofa. Dan didn’t know what to expect from him, but Phil did nothing, said nothing, didn’t even look at Dan. He then left the lounge, and Dan unpaused the video. When Phil returned a few minutes later, Dan somehow knew it was ok for him to continue watching. Phil was just there, sitting next to him and holding two large books and a small piece of paper.

Dan was throwing glances at him, trying to figure out what was on Phil’s mind at this moment, why he was sitting still and staring in front of him.

Then Dan in the video said: “But I saw no end, no escape, no way to change the world or who I was, so one evening I thought fuck it and I atte-”, and Dan jumped at those words. He didn’t know how he managed to stop the video with his sweaty fingers at the right moment, and he didn’t know why’d he do that. Clearly, Phil had watched it before. He _knew_.

Phil finally looked him in the eyes. “I thought so,” he said. He opened the piece of paper he was holding. “You told me you wrote a note, but I never expected to actually see it. It was in your hoodie’s pocket, you know?”

Dan totally forgot about it, but yes, of course he knew it was there. Stupid piece of paper with no real explanation, just a lot of sorry-s and fuck-you-s.

“That’s what got you here, isn’t it?” Phil whispered.

“I guess.”

“But you are not dead.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Good,” Phil said. “Keep watching then.”

Dan hesitated a moment before asking: “Phil?” Phil raised an eyebrow. “Could you hug me, maybe?”

And then, when Phil was putting the books away, Dan saw that _Dan & Phil_ was written on one of them, and it made him even more emotional than he already was. Since nobody really hugged Dan in a very long time, Phil’s embrace felt foreign at first and a bit uncomfortable and just _wrong_. But Phil was warm, and he smelled nice, and he was gentle and awkward, and he apparently knew everything about Dan, because it didn’t feel as if someone was in Dan’s personal space, not really.

With Phil holding him from behind, his head on Dan’s shoulder, Dan continued watching his own video. Phil chuckled when Dan listened to the part of him meeting Phil for five times in a row, but otherwise they stayed silent.

“Does it really get better?” Dan asked when the video ended.

“It does. It did.”

A notification popped up on Phil’s phone. Dan became aware of someone else’s phone still being in his hands and the wrongness of that situation, but Phil clearly didn’t mind, and he wasn’t trying to get a hold of it. He even asked Dan to click on the notification.

“Why are you suddenly okay with me going online?”

“Maybe that’s what you need.”

There was a short video of some desert-y looking place and a woman’s voice behind the camera saying: “Look what you two are missing out on.”

“Instagram’s being weird again, it’s from last night.” Phil sounded confused. “It’s the middle in the night in the States right now.”

Dan noticed that Phil even already replied to the video with the funny selfie of theirs. “What’s Instagram, b-t-w?”

“Oh,” Phil looked as if he messed something up _really_ _bad_. “Shit, I forgot it didn’t existed then. Please don’t invent it or something, you know, once you get back.”

What Dan was supposed to replay to this? That he didn’t want to get back to the mess that was his life? That he wished he’d never had to go back? That they had no idea how to make it happen anyway? That it was too late? That time travel wasn’t possible?

Phil didn’t give him an opportunity to say anything. “Press this arrow in the corner. And then press on me there, the yellow-ish bubble. So, Instagram is like one more social media website where people are posting pictures and short stories. Very addictive. Lots of dogs.”

He looked through the photos Phil posted, contemplating whether or not he could say out loud that the older Phil was pretty damn hot. He did the math, and it shocked him that this Phil was fifteen years older than him.

One of the photos he clicked on was them together in shiny jackets. The capture said _performing our show in London tonight_, and Dan had to push away all his thoughts on age and attraction and ask: “What exactly are we doing in life? It’s not just youtube, isn’t it?”

“What aren’t we doing,” Phil pointed at the books on the table. Dan reached out and took the one on top. _Dan and Phil Go Outside_.

And so Dan was turning page after page, looking at photos and reading funny captures, and Phil was telling him – in no particular order and with plenty of random jumps to the things that were happening in the world and in pop culture – about their lives. About their gaming channel and their merch, their trip to Tokyo and them working closely with Phil’s brother, Dan’s going to his first pride and Dan being an ambassador for Young Minds, the first book and the first tour, Interactive Introverts and their radio show days, them producing an app and creating a boardgame, same-sex marriage being legalized and Marvel cinematic universe expanding.

Phil was telling him stories that made future seem less terrifying, less vague, less of a mess. It seemed too good to be true.

“Nothing’s that perfect, Phil,” he said.

“I’m not saying it was an easy road. It wasn’t.”

“What was the hardest part?”

Phil shrugged. He was still holding Dan with one hand, another hand interrupting Dan’s attempts to close the pages with a llama and a lion printed on them. “I can’t pick one, there were lots of pretty messed up moments I wasn’t sure we could survive. But we did, isn’t it what counts?”

“The fuck do I know? I didn’t survive mine.”

Phil’s grip on him tightened. “You are _alive_, you’ve said it yourself.”

“Let’s face it, Phil: older me is not here. I’m probably dying right now, and this is just a weird dream of something I’ll never have.”

“Does it feel like dying?”

“Well, no, I actually feel okay.”

“Good, that’s good.”

“Why’d you change your attitude? About me learning the future?”

Their eyes locked for a moment. “I’ve tried to remember what was happening in your life just before we started talking. You’ve never told me the exact date of your attempt, but you did tell me it was spring. And you were always referring to it as the night you’ve decided to give life another chance. And it got me thinking that maybe – _maybe_ if you learn what the future is like, it will somehow save you. It’s crazy, you being here, my Dan missing, and there are no how-to recipes for dealing with such things, but if there were, getting to know that there’s something for you in the future would definitely be one of those things.”

“What scares me the most,” Dan said, “is how okay you are with talking about a suicide attempt. You became calmer ever since you’ve figured out I’m here because I’ve tried to, you know-”

“It just gave me hope. Which sounds super weird, but that’s probably it. Hope and some understating, I guess, and a plan. Having a plan is better than sitting here with no idea what’s going on and what to do. Even if it’s a rubbish plan, it’s better than nothing. But I’m not okay, Dan. It’s just not the first time I’m having a conversation like this. And, to quote one youtuber you really enjoy watching, _I understand how you feel._ That helps.”

For a second Dan legitimately thought his life was over as he couldn’t breathe in. “What exactly are you saying, Phil?”

“The road to here-and-now was anything but easy.”

“Will you tell me?”

Phil rubbed his nose against Dan’s shoulder. “Don’t know how telling you about the dark times will help you believe there is a bright future ahead.”

“All adventures around the globe that you’ve told me about, all those successes and creative energy, it’s all great and all, but it’s – I don’t know, Phil, life is a joke, a mess, it’s dramatic as fuck and not _just_. I need to hear about the other side.”

“You’ve heard some of it already, in your video.”

Dan found Phil’s phone under his legs, unlocked it and went back to youtube. Nine million views, unbelievable. His eyes caught the date the video was uploaded. “Isn’t it July right now? Are you telling me all these millions of views are from a _month_ of the video being up?” Phil nodded. “It’s not a ten-second video, for fucks sake. It’s almost an _hour_, how is it even possible?”

“It’s a masterpiece.” Phil said as if it’d explain everything. “You are loved and adored.”

“Yeah, but… By _millions_?”

“By _me_.”

Dan laughed, he felt himself blushing. “How many times have you watched it?”

“After it was uploaded? Once, if you don’t count today. Before that? God, I could probably cite the whole thing if you were to wake me up in the middle of the night. _That_ many times.”

“Have you ever done your own coming out video?”

“Yep, right after yours. Go see it, it’s like six times shorter.”

Phil’s video had lighter tone, and Dan could still see the Amazing Phil he knew in there. They both giggled while watching it, even though it wasn’t all smiles and unicorns. Something’s caught Dan’s attention. Phil was basically _out_ ever since his university years, but he only made a video now. “What took you so long with this one?” Dan asked.

“Was waiting for you to do it first,” Phil whispered. “You had to be ready to do this.”

“And you were just patiently waiting all those years?”

“I’d wait another decade, if you needed it.”

“_Amazing Phil,_ aren’t you?”

“No, there’s nothing amazing about it, to be honest. It’s the least I could do.”

“What do you mean?”

Phil sighed. “It’s always the thing with you, isn’t it? Even when you are happy and content, you don’t forget about the darkness and death and pain of existence. Those are the everyday things for you, things you can’t imagine your life without. You don’t need a future that doesn’t have those things, do you? Just being happy and content is not for you.”

Phil stopped talking, so Dan said: “Tell me about the dark side of the future.”

“I don’t want to go into details. Let’s say there was a moment my heart was bared for all the world to see, but it wasn’t meant to be. I could deal with the embarrassment. If it were only about that, I’d be okay sooner or later. But I couldn’t deal with you hating me. You didn’t _actually_ hate me, but I thought you did, and that was enough.”

Dan suddenly realized they were in the dark now. It must’ve been hours since they started talking. They were sitting like that for ages, and they didn’t move, didn’t eat, didn’t go to the bathroom. The book pages right in front of him were hardly visible now.

“One day you came home only to find me having a mental breakdown. I mean, I had plenty of those throughout the years, but this one – it’s the only time in my life I’ve thought about-” Phil’s forehead touched Dan’s shoulder. “I don’t think I could do it, but just having the thought out there in the back of my mind, that was too much.” He took a moment to breathe. “The thing is, you are much more open than me. You express your emotions online much more than I do. And while you were raging and hating on people who’d bring up this thing over and over again, I was just bottling everything inside, all the guilt that wasn’t really mine, the despair, all those negative thoughts and feelings. It might’ve been the only time in our relationship when I thought I couldn’t tell you how I felt.”

“I couldn’t ever hate you, Phil,” Dan said quietly. “I’ve heard myself talking about you, you being accepting, you being my safe place – I couldn’t ever, you know that?”

“I do. That time? Everything was falling apart. I was falling apart.”

“But you survived it. _We_ did.”

“Indeed,” Phil agreed. “That’s when you told me about your attempt on your life. We’d been in a relationship for like two or three years, you trusted me with everything but that one thing. You later told me that the moment you saw me on the kitchen floor, you immediately knew how I felt, and it shocked you to see me in that dark place.”

Dan felt tears running down his cheeks. There were steps somewhere behind them. Phil stiffened. The room lightened up. “What’s going on?” a voice asked.

They turned their heads to see who had said it, but even before they noticed future Dan standing in the doorway, they both knew it was him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! One more chapter left and (probably) an epilogue.
> 
> Btw, "I understand how you feel" is a reference to Oliver Thorne's video.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [dnpstolemyheart](https://dnpstolemyheart.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hello.


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